Dishonored

 

I was mostly interested in Dishonored because when going through the steam Store I kept noticing that it is among one of the most reviewed and highest rated games on there. Something like 98% average. I heard its among the best of the Stealth genre, but also it lets you play your own way it isnt strictly a stealth game. So I got it for cheap with no expectations other than that. Upon starting the game you're met with a simple difficulty choice. I just picked 2/4 normal. Then youre off to some brief intro cinematics and a premise that puts you in a situation where youre being framed for a murder of an empress, thus the title Dishonored. The actual setting and time period is ambiguous, but it seems like something around 18th century Victorian era but with an almost steampunk twist because theres lots of electricity type gadgets such as gates, electric fences, turrets, and pistols , plus halfway through the game theres giant robots.

The game takes a mission based progression system, 10 missions, where each mission ends with its own statistics screen detailing various things like amount of kills, if youve been detected, what items you found etc, and then usually you are taken on a boat by a friendly NPC to either the allied encampment area, or to the next main area. Each level is this almost psuedo open world feeling where its these relativiely large cities or village areas that you can freely roam around and take any number of various routes to reach the various objectives. There are main objectives, and side objectives, but for the most part I just did the main objectives because it didnt seem worth my time to go off and do all the side content, and I guess this is where a lot of my gripes with the game come in. First; I just dont really have the kind of patience required for most stealth games. I find it really boring and tedious having to crouch in a corner for the 100th time as I listen to two NPC's have a mundane dialogue about the weather or small talk and have to twiddle my fingers until one of them deicdes to walk away and go about his programmed patrol route. So, choosing to do side quests just means more boring mundane crouching in corners that I'd rather avoid. Second, while the game does have upgrades and various things you can collect, usually in the form of Runes which act as skill points you can invest in the various different abilities, such as powering up this teleport ability which was probably the most satisfying mechanic in the game, to other things like getting a magic ability that lets you possess animals to attack enemies, which I never used. To other useful things like when you stealth kill someone they turn into ash, not leaving a corpse behind. For the most part the abilities werent extremely interesting to me because I wasnt that interested in using a lot of crazy gimmicky magical stuff, I just wanted to increase my health, ideally make the sword that you use stronger, so I basically just used my skill points to level up movement speed, health, teleport ability, how much noise I make, so I never felt the need to really go too far out of my way to find these optional rune skill points scattered around the map, mostly because like I said previously, the core stealth gameplay I just found frankly boring and annoying. There is another perk system you can engage with called Bone Charms which are also scattered around the map, these seemed to be minor little passive buffs you can equip a certain amount of at once, stuff like food heals slighty more, slightly faster climbing, potions heal more. I found  a few of these, but again didnt feel a big desire to go far out of my way to find many of them.

The general 'character progression' felt like it had much to be desired, for me personally. I was hoping I could make melee combat viable, I know its a stealth game, but that basically means anytime you get caught then you just quickload over and over and slowly sneaking around, listening to boring conversations for the 10th time. It would be nice if , when I get caught, that I can just use my sword - but no. The enemies dodge your sword attacks like some Matrix bullet time shit and it just feels clunky and shit. So, instead, what I did was chose to upgrade my pistol as much as possible at the Piero shop guy who you can buy stuff from in between missions, holding 30 bullets instead of 5, more accuracy, better reload speed etc. This thing definitely made the game more enjoyable once I began using it, the game went from a boring slog to at least combat felt viable and I wasnt just running away from everything like a coward. Still, it wasnt like some amazing first person shooter game. It was like a medicore shooter, and a medicore stealth experience at the same time instead of just one of them. I get that people hail this as a great stealth game but for me it just wasnt clicking that much. The stealth system really didnt even seem that in depth, theres just a button to crouch which makes you harder to be seen, then when an enemy is going to detect you theres a detection meter and thats about it. You can do things like throwing bottles to distract them, but all it really boils down to is once again just hiding behind a wall and waiting for them to go about their programmed patrol routines, sneaking behind them, and pressing 1 button to execute them. Except the controls kind of suck and are finnicky, and if you have your equipment sheathed then it takes like 4 seconds to take it out which frequently messed me up and got me caught, or you press the attack button too soon and he slices at the enemy instead of 1hits him, stuff like that made the game frustrating.
The game uses that modern style quest objective system where you can just blindly go towards the main quest objective so it isnt too obscure what you need to do to progress, usually its just find a key or item or switch to open a door and go to some guy you have to assassinate. Though, a few times the verticality of the game can get irritating to navigate because it will look like youre right next to the objective but its behind a bunch of locked gates and walls that make you crawl through the whole level finding these Oil tanks or switches that feels like it just pads out the duration of the levels a bit.

A lot of the game is quite repetitive and mundane, its almost the same sort of mission over and over. Youre in the save zone hub world where you can freely walk around and talk to friendly NPC, buy things from the shop, then you take a boat to some new area to assassinate a guy that your allied npc's tell you to. All the areas you visit are just some variation of inner-city apartment blocks, factories, and streets. The world design is atmospheric and done well enough, but it all kinda blends together and not much stands out except one or two memorable moments like the Mask party where you infiltrate a party where everyone wears goofy masks, but this mission isnt even combat focused you kind of just go around talking to NPC's and lure someone to a bathroom and kill them then leave so the only eventful thing happening here is the visuals.  Then, the general mission structure is just either sneaking past enemies, stealth killing them, running in with my pistol and killing them all and trying to make my way to the main objective to execute some high ranking official usually.

The thing that made this game particularly frustrating is the fact that theres so many god damn electric gates, fences, and turrets all around. You cant go 30 seconds without running into some barred off electric fence you have to navigate around and take out the Whale-oil tank to disable, or accidentally run into some electric turret that instantly kills you which was extremely annoying. I get they needed to add more mechanics and opposition to the game to make it challenging but the frequent usage of these things was more like "ugh, this shit again?" than something genuniely fun and challenging. The game isnt so much difficult but just tests your patience. Yes its sorta viable to just go stealthy until you get detected, then go guns blazing but the mechanics arent all that satisfying to use.

I didnt care much for the general plot or story, the characters arent all that memorable its just this little girl Emily that the whole plot centers around, protecting her then she gets kidnapped or something so you have to track her down towards the end of the game. The shop and upgrade system is a little weird because usually before every mission you can talk to this npc to buy stuff, but one mission hes randonly missing, then towards the end of the game hes just gone for good so you can no longer buy upgrades, like I'm sort of glad I didnt go out of my way to do all sorts of optional objectives and collect loot because it probably would of felt pointless anyway like it isnt very rewarding and the items you can buy in the shop didnt seem that great. There is a crossbow but I prefered to use the pistol instead because I didnt want to invest as much into full stealth because its not a playstyle I fully enjoy.

The enemy variety is pretty basic, you have regular guards that all seem to use the same equipment, pistol and swords. At a few points you run into these beast type sewer monsters that I mostly just ran past, so I barely remember the details. A few times you run into these essentially zombie enemies. The game takes place around the Black Plague era, which is probaly the most interesting part about the plot, so you have these rats everywhere that even respond dynamically according to how 'chaotic' or peaceful you play through the game, so you can run into these people infected with the plague that kind of just run at you and spit and cough on you, they werent much of a challenge but it was a fun change of pace. Later on in the game you deal with these Assassin enemies for a very brief period so that was an interesting change too, but other than that theres not much variation in opposition.

Towards the end of the game there were a few missions that were just irritating to get through, a lot of breaking into encampments and areas full of automated turrets and electronic gates, also the game introduces these giant roaming enemy robots that detect you and shoot rockets at you that were super annoying and not fun to deal with, not to mention felt out of place with the whole vibe of the game. A few times towards the end of the game I was having so little fun that I'd just try to sprint past everything in the game and make it towards the main objective as fast as possible, quicksaving after every inch of progress.

It's not a bad game, I can see why people like it because in the stealth genre I guess its one of the better examples. I even had a bit of fun with it for what it is, thankfully I finished it in a short amount of time, like 6 hours, the pacing is pretty good in terms of making you feel like youre progressing through the game in a good manner especially since every level is distinctly broken up into these ending screens and the boat voyage routines. The graphics are decent for what it is, its a 2012 game and the only weird aspect is some of the textures are super low res and blurry for some weird reason, couped with pop-in. The character designs are questionable, its like this overly cartoony but also ugly artstyle - I don't really like or dislike the artstyle, but it does stand out and is memorable especially the character models. Towards the end of the game the plot changes to where your allies betray you and make you drink poison and then the game loop changes because now youre no longer going back and forth to this safezone being able to buy equipment and upgrades but youre crawling around the town trying to avoid all sorts of enemies and giant robots and trying to exact revenge. I'm glad they changed it up atleast, theres this whole optional objective about trying to get your gear back which I opted to do, but im not sure what the consequence would have been if I just didnt do it. Probably only gave me like 20 pistol bullets back ultimately, and it took an hour of climbing this big tower with a obtuse puzzle at the end that pissed me off that needed , yet again, to find one of those red oil tanks to progress.

I at least appreciate and had fun that the game let me use a pistol and blast past stealth sections that I found boring, the plot is generic but interesting enough to keep me invested, the time period of the game was cool I liked the sort of 18th century vibe and town design, exploring for runes and skill points was fun at times using the Heart item which helps you locate them, but ultimately I feel like these stealth games need a better reward/punishment mechanism in place to force you to commit to your actions. Like a lot of the weight and tension goes out the window in these kind of games when you can just quicksave every 10 seconds. If the game had real conseqences for your actions like, try to be stealthy but as soon as you get caught then youre compelled to try hard and go guns blazing or else you'd have to replay huge sections, that might of made the gameplay more interesting. But the whole crawling around listening to mundane dialogue then quicksaving right before you assassinte someone because you might get caught gameplay loop is pretty boring. The last mission of the game was kinda overwhelming you just climb up this really easy tower and the guy kidnaps the girl and you just aim your pistol anywhere at him and shoot and save the girl then the game ends. At least give me some kind of boss fight or anything, I don't know it was a little anti-climactic.

6/10